Carr Road was dedicated by the Canada Lands Company on December 10, 2013, as part of their redevelopment of Edmonton’s former Canadian Forces Base (Griesbach Barracks).
Lieutenant-General William Kier Carr, Distinguished Flying Cross, Venerable Order of Saint John, Commander of the Order of Military Merit, Legion of Merit, Member of Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame, was the first commander of Air Command, vice-president of Canadair and Bombardier and widely known as the father of the modern Canadian Air Force.
He was born in Newfoundland, the son of the manager of a fishery in the tiny fishing town of Grand Bank on the Burin Peninsula. Bill was a photo reconnaissance Spitfire pilot with 683 Squadron, Royal Air Force. He flew a Spitfire equipped to fly fast, to fly high and to run from the trouble that it was a magnet for. It had no guns, no armour, and no bulletproof glass. Its only weapons were its cameras, its speed and the courage of young Mr. Carr.
He would strap himself into a Spitfire and deliberately take it deep into a Europe run by Nazis, the greatest evil known to modern man. In broad daylight, he would fly over their encampments, their anti-aircraft installations, their factories, their cities, their airfields, travelling at 300 miles per hour, never positive that his oxygen system would continue to feed him life, or that his engine would continue to run in the thin air, always on the lookout for an attack. He did this 142 times.
After the war, Carr continued to fly, did post-graduate work in chemistry and physics in the United States and attended staff college. He continued to fly in the photo mapping business he learned so well in Malta and Italy – this time on Lancasters and Mitchells – until he became commanding officer of 412 Squadron at Uplands. It was here, on aircraft like the de Havilland Comet, the world’s first jet airliner, that he flew people like Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret, French President Charles De Gaulle and Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.
After 412 Squadron, Carr moved up the command ladder in rapid steps – being promoted to the rank of group captain, commanding the United Nations air transport operation in the Congo, commanding Royal Canadian Air Force Station Namao in Alberta, and the National Defence College, being promoted to air commodore, commanding Training Command as a major-general, going to North American Aerospace Defense Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs as chief of operations and – ultimately – being promoted to lieutenant-general and becoming as Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff.
His final leadership role was as the first commander of Air Command – an entity that he was responsible for creating in 1975.